An Irishman's Diary

OVER THE SUMMER just past, I found myself wondering, whatever happened to Doc, Muller, Maggot, Duck, Strum and all those other heads from Dún Laoghaire and Dalkey I used to hang around with in the late 1970s and early 1980s? Not to mention Pete, Nevil, Eoin, Vandra, Mick, Padraig, Johnny and Dave. I haven’t thought about the old gang for years – what’s brought on this sudden burst of nostalgia for my half-forgotten late teens? Blame Facebook.

It seems to have found a way of dredging up my past and serving it back to me in nicely parcelled chunks of collective memory. Up to recently, I’ve singularly failed to engage with this social media format, although I’ve been a member for well over a year now. Every now and then, I’d get a notification of a friend request, and feel obliged to click onto my Facebook page. After accepting the request, I’d then stare at the wall (the Facebook wall, not the actual wall) for a few minutes before logging out again and getting on with my offline life.

Then came the email that sparked a volte-Facebook. It was an invitation to join a Facebook group called “When We Were Very Young: Dalkey and Dún Laoghaire, late ’70s, early ’80s”. Not quite as catchy as “Do the Timewarp” or “Total Recall”, but at least it was time-and-location specific. Group members post their grainy old snapshots taken during that period, and the rest of the group have fun identifying old faces and places, and sharing their (often hazy) recollections of the time. The group is open for anyone to join, but really, unless you socialised in and around Dún Laoghaire and Dalkey in and around that period of time, you won’t find much to interest you here.

I found plenty to interest me – it was fun trying to stretch my memory and recall some of the faces. Some were best friends I’ve since lost touch with, or good pals I hung out at parties, pubs and all-back-to-mines, or just casual acquaintances who I was barely on nodding terms with. And inevitably, faces I simply didn’t recognise, because we never crossed paths, even though we all probably took the same well-trodden trail between McDonaghs on Castle Street and Finnegans on Sorrento Road. But seeing them all collated on Facebook, it feels like they were all my best friends. Through the nostalgic haze of the Polaroid lens, everyone has blended together into one big, happy, 1970s family.

Some of the pics were taken at favourite haunts such as McDonaghs in Dalkey or the Elphin Bar in Dún Laoghaire. Others were snapped in people’s houses and back gardens. There’s even a snap of Sting and Simon le Bon in Bob Geldof’s dad’s back garden in Glenageary – alas, I didn’t get to hang out with that crowd. I did hang out with the local bands, though – there’s Johnny Ferguson from Thunderbirds are Go!, and Eoin McCarthy and Peter Rayel from Nine Out of Ten Cats. Legends. But who’s that mullet-headed fella playing guitar on the bandstand in Dún Laoghaire pier? Omigod – it’s me.

Looking into this big old window that’s suddenly been opened into my past, I realise how few photographs I have from that time. When people get together in the pub or club these days, they’re quick to whip out the smartphones and snap the action. Back then, I don’t think I even owned a camera. So it’s nice to have this little resource, just to have a visual connection with my misspent youth.

And it’s funny to find myself using all this new-fangled social media to time-travel into a long-gone era. I’m sure that wasn’t part of Mark Zuckerberg’s original game-plan. The people in my age-group aren’t even in Facebook’s original teenage demographic – but if Facebook had been around when we were young, free and floating around in Dalkey and Dún Laoghaire, we’d probably have been posting these same Polaroids with gleeful abandon.

I can picture people from all parts of the country setting up similar groups, and having their own local online nostalgia party.

In fact, it's being done in the country at large, through the National Library's Facebook page ( facebook.com/ NationalLibraryofIreland). The library has been posting photographs from its archives, dating back to the 1860s, and inviting visitors to help identify faces, landmarks, dates and other details. These are not just gurning teenagers in mullets – there are wedding photos, funeral processions, street scenes, parades, public gatherings and historic landmarks. There's a great snap taken in O'Connell Street in 1966, the day after Nelson's Pillar was blown up by the IRA – maybe you're in that picture? Oh, and there's the tram for Kingstown leaving Sackville Street – I used to get the 7a.

On the page, a flyer from the National Library’s Small Lives lecture series last February reads: “It’s not the past that matters – it’s the way you see it.” These last few months, I’ve been seeing the past in a totally different light.